On Mar 22, 7:00 pm, Larry Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > jmDesktop wrote: > > For students 9th - 12th grade, with at least Algebra I. Do you think > > Python is a good first programming language for someone with zero > > programming experience? Using Linux and Python for first exposure to > > programming languages and principles. > > > Thank you. > > ABSOLUTELY. Get them started with a REAL programming language that will > teach them proper fundamentals. I wish Python would have been around 25 > years ago when I taught incoming Freshmen at local University. To get > students to understand about variable references, etc. I always started > them with Assembler so they could understand what was actually going on. > I see so may on this forum that have the wrong ideas about variable names/ > storage.
It's funny, 25 years ago - I was 10 then - I got my first computer from my cousin (a Sinclair ZX81, I think it had a different name in the US) as he was getting a brand new C64. In those days BASIC was very slow so if you wanted to do anything demanding with a computer you had to learn 'machine language' (I didn't have an assembler...). I wrote my little programs in a notebook, then POKEd them into memory! I learnt so much then. Years later, when I got my first C compiler, it was a liberation. My other 'coming of age' was when I took a lambda-calculus course at university. I felt like a man who's had a black and white TV set all his life and watches colour TV for the first time. What if computers had been designed as 'lambda-calculus machines' from the start rather than Turing machines? Anyway, here the conclusion that I draw: learn lambda-calculus and Turing machines. The rest is syntactic sugar. Not quite seriously but still'ly yours -- Arnaud -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
